Rizzo's Fire

number-two pencil.

Rizzo slid the drawer closed, then took out what he firmly believed would be his very last pack of Chesterfields. He lit a cigarette and sighed.

“Come on, Robbie,” he said softly. “Help me out a little. Give me somethin’.”

He rubbed a forefinger at his eye.

“Any goddamned thing.”

LATER, THE two detectives sat at Lauria’s kitchen table, glancing at the dark bloodstains and yellow coroner’s chalk marks on the pale green vinyl flooring.

“I got a feelin’ this guy spent a lot of time putzin’ around this apartment in his pajamas,” Rizzo said, drawing on a second cigarette. “So your theory ’bout Lauria getting killed making himself a cup a tea in the morning or late night doesn’t necessarily hold. If it was a burglar, though, and the perp did come in through that back window, we can probably figure it happened at night. Too many houses and windows lookin’ down on that backyard to take a chance breaking in during daylight.”

“If it was a burglar, and if that’s how he got in,” Priscilla said.

“Okay, let’s hear it,” Rizzo prompted.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. This is making less and less sense to me, this burglar angle.”

“Tell me,” he said.

“Let’s walk through it. Possibility one: It’s nighttime, Lauria is in his kitchen getting some tea. Perp breaks the rear window and climbs in. Why doesn’t the vic hear it? Why doesn’t he go see what happened? How does he wind up rear-strangled in the freakin’ kitchen?”

“I don’t know,” Rizzo said.

She went on, “Okay, possibility two: Lauria is in bed, asleep. Perp breaks in, somehow Lauria doesn’t wake up. Perp searches the bedroom, quiet as a mouse, ransacks it like we found it. Then he starts checkin’ out the rest of the place. Suddenly, Lauria wakes up, goes to investigate, and gets his ass choked to death in the kitchen.”

Rizzo challenged her. “So the perp searches the bedroom, but he don’t see the big prize, the watch on the nightstand?”

“Exactly,” she said. “The bedroom was ransacked, either before or after the killing. But the watch was left.”

He nodded. “So our burglar perp is either the most incompetent asshole in the business, or he found somethin’ else. Something better’n that watch, something so valuable he couldn’t believe his luck, and he was content to leave with it-get the fuck outta Dodge.”

Priscilla’s lips pursed. “Or, he found exactly what he was looking for. What he had come for.”

Rizzo looked at her. “Like what?”

“Beats me, boss, beats me good,” she said. “From the looks of this place, Lauria didn’t have anything worth stealing. What could this poor dude possibly have had that was worth killing over?”

Rizzo dragged on the cigarette, then expelled smoke away from Jackson, rubbing his eye.

After a moment, he spoke again. “That shoe store dame, the manager. She said she paid Lauria a week’s salary plus commission and eight days’ severance. Annasia told us Lauria paid his November rent in cash on October twenty-eighth. I saw a bank passbook in the bedroom. It showed no deposits made around the twenty- eighth. Last entry was back in mid-September, a hundred-dollar withdrawal.”

Priscilla frowned. “A passbook, did you say?”

“Yeah, a passbook. Guy still had a friggin’ passbook account. Like my seventy-eight-year-old mother’s got. He’s a freakin’ fossil. Makes me look like a today kinda guy.”

Priscilla reflected, then spoke. “So the guy cashes his paycheck, takes his dough, and pays the rent.”

Rizzo dipped his head to the side. “Yeah, but the rent wasn’t much. I came across the receipts. He’da had lotsa cash left.”

“So where is it?” Priscilla asked. “It’s not in this apartment.”

Rizzo shrugged. “In the burglar’s pocket. You know, the burglar neither one of us seems to feel was here.”

Priscilla took a breath and said, “Joe, this isn’t getting us anywhere. It could go nine different ways. If the guy that killed him wanted it to look like a burglary, he’da tossed the place, grabbed the cash, and left.”

“There’s nothing else worth stealin’ in this place except that watch,” Rizzo said. “Lauria never even got as far as the eight-track stage, he’s still playin’ vinyl records. If it was me tryin’ to make this look like a burglary, I’da tossed the place, too. And grabbed the cash so the cops wouldn’t find it. But I wouldn’t be lookin’ for anything else. What the hell could have been here, Cil, Ed Sullivan’s fuckin’ autograph?” He leaned forward.

“And that could explain the watch. The guy missed it ’cause he really didn’t care about finding anything of value. He broke in specifically to kill Lauria. Assuming, of course, that he did break in. If he came in the front door and then staged that broken window, the whole thing coulda been unplanned, just a fight between two screwballs.”

Priscilla shook her head. “A guy walking in and out the front door just to pay a visit woulda left prints, Joe. Or wipe-downs. If the murder was unplanned. And besides, you heard Annasia. Lauria only had one person visiting him over the years. His cousin.”

“Yeah,” Rizzo said.

She frowned. “You think it was her coulda killed him?”

“Doubtful,” he said. “Women don’t strangle-they poison, they shoot, they stab. They’ll even push you out a fuckin’ window if the need arises. It takes a lot of strength and a cold heart to strangle somebody. And you usually cut your hands up pretty bad. If Lauria’s neck bled, so did the killer’s hands, unless he wore real heavy gloves. Remind me to tell Dr. Rum ’n Coke-mon to check for multiple blood specimens from the body and floor samples.”

“Yassa, boss, I’s surely gonna re-member dat,” Priscilla said in a high pitched singsong.

“Don’t start with that shit again, Priscilla. I already explained my doubts about the guy, remember?”

“Yeah, Joe, relax. Just kiddin’.”

They sat quietly, each reviewing the case at hand.

“So,” Rizzo said after a while, “what have we got?”

“What ever we want,” she said with resignation. “We got a burglar, we got a pretend burglar, we got an invited guest, an uninvited guest, a premeditated murder or a spontaneous spat between two nerds arguin’ over who’s cooler, Superman, Batman, or Captain fuckin’ Kirk. Take your pick.”

“You know, this reminds me of some wisdom once passed on to me from my uncle Jim,” Rizzo said.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

He stood and moved to the sink. He ran water over the stub of his cigarette, then dropped it into the trash. Leaning against the small refrigerator and crossing his arms, he smiled at Priscilla as he spoke again.

“It was the day of my Confirmation. I was lined up outside the church wearin’ my new shiny blue suit with a red arm ribbon, me and all the other kids and their sponsors. My uncle Jim, he was my godfather, he christened me, so he served as my sponsor. Well, we’re waitin’ outside, and I’m startin’ to squirm around, gettin’ all nervous. So Uncle Jim asks me, ‘What’s the matter, Joe?’ and I tell him, ‘Well, the nuns said the bishop’s gonna slap us. They said we gotta kneel down at the altar, and then he’s gonna slap us across the face. And I don’t wanna get slapped.’ ”

Priscilla shrugged. “Sounds reasonable to me.”

Rizzo nodded. “I thought so. Anyway, Uncle Jim kneels down right on the sidewalk in his good suit, probably the only one he owned. He puts his hand on my shoulder and gets real serious, looks me right in the eye. ‘Kid,’ he says. ‘Relax. This is just to make your mother happy, that’s all. So just relax. At the end of the day, it’s all just bullshit.’ ”

“What an upliftin’ Christian message of hope,” Priscilla said.

“Wasn’t it, though? But this here Lauria case. It brought old Uncle Jim to mind.”

Priscilla’s brow furrowed. “Why? I don’t get it.”

Rizzo reached for a third Chesterfield. “I dunno, Cil, maybe ’cause that’s what this case looks like. Maybe, at the end a the day, it’s all just bullshit.”

He lit the cigarette, eyeing her through the smoke.